War IS sad. Don’t hide it from your children

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With Remembrance Day and Iraq our children are bombarded with images of war. What should we tell them? The Childrens Laureate says that as the border between childhood and adulthood blurs, its best to be honest

EVERY evening this last week before Remembrance Day we have seen the faces of young men smiling out at us from our television screens; Black Watch soldiers, sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, killed not in the fields of Flanders, not in some distant historical war, but only hours before. Alive yesterday. Dead today.

A fresh-faced lad from Fife has been blown up by a suicide bomber on some dusty road in Iraq thousands of miles from home. We see the house where he lived, see flowers laid: “To my daddy”. We’re told of a family devastated by grief. And our children